Budget Condo Redo

In October AJ and I were hired to do a budget redo of a condo out of state owners wanted to put on the market. I had $17,000 to redo the house well enough to sell at a profit. Our main job was to paint the walls, renovate the bath and kitchen and refinish the floors… I’ve included a few before and afters below. Keep in mind that because we had such a limited budget there are things, like the drop ceilings in the kitchen and the bathrooms, that unfortunately stayed. We figured that the new home owner could tackle those items.

Kitchen After

Kitchen Before

Bathroom After

Bathroom Before

Living Room

Living Room Before

Because I had such a limited budget to work with I opted to paint all the walls with my sister instead of hiring a crew. AJ took the kids up to Vermont to visit his brother and we cranked out 3/4 of the condo in a weekend. I chose to do white, custom matched to the new kitchen cabinets, on all the walls and trim. My goal was not to make it perfect, otherwise I would have done different finishes on the walls and trim, but just to clean everything up and give the entire condo a blank slate for the prospective buyers.

I decided to do the floors one of my favorite stains, Jacobean by Minwax, to contrast nicely with the walls. We used the same company we used for the flip and had  the same great experience this time around as well. They are incredibly affordable and do a good job. (As a major plus, the owner speaks English pretty well, which is a must for me…. we had a big mistake in our last house with the people we hired to do our floors when they couldn’t understand what we were telling them.)

It was tricky navigating exactly how to spend the $17,000. In one sense it’s a lot of money… and in another, it’s almost nothing to do a redo on an entire place. The tub in the bathroom was one of our largest expenses. It was a pink cast iron tub and it was completely disgusting. AJ was out straight with stuff at our rentals and we decided this would be one of the things we’d hire out. We spent $4500 of the budget to hire a bath company who specializes in liners to completely demo the tub and put in a new one with sides. The cost made me cringe when I knew what AJ could do it for but I promised him I wouldn’t ask him for much with this project. We then hired a handyman to put bead board over the pink tile and I purchased a new vanity and toilet which we had a plumber install. The costs for the plumber were about four times what I was estimating because he had to change so many pipes to make it up to code.

The kitchen was put back together with an almost identical layout with the exception that I purchased a counter depth fridge and put it in the actual kitchen space instead of down a hallway. Even though it feels like it’s right out in the open the kitchen is much more user friendly now. The cabinets are the exact ones we used in the flip but this time we wised up and had the company put them together instead of AJ and I doing it.

The condo had an accepted offer within the first few days of being on the market despite it not being perfect!

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